Like most other non-physicists in the scientific community, I have always assumed that the evidence for the Big Bang, black holes, dark energy, and the like was rock-solid, and I even promoted this cosmology in one of my recent books. Alas! Now I am convinced that modern astrophysics is a pseudo-science with overtones of a religious dogma that fabricates stories to prop up its reigning deity and treats contradictory evidence as a heresy.
These are strong words, I know, but they are well supported in a mind-opening, paradigm shattering book called The Electric Sky by the emeritus electrical engineer (University of Massachusetts) cum astronomer, Donald E. Scott. Our mainstream view of the cosmos has been shaped by an interpretation of the red shift phenomenon that is demonstrably wrong, by a misplaced reliance on gravity as the primary shaping force in the universe, and by plugging up the serious deficiencies in this model with imaginary (unverifiable) theories about black holes, dark matter, dark energy, and other creations.
Meanwhile, compelling evidence that electric plasmas, electromagnetic forces, ubiquitous electric current “filaments” and related phenomena represent a vastly greater cosmic influence and account for 99% of the matter/energy in the universe has been rejected with thinly veiled hostility. Consider this simple household experiment: It takes only a small toy magnet to induce a gravity-defying leap by, say, a nail or a ball bearing. Electromagnetism is vastly more powerful than gravity, and it can be used in a plasma laboratory to simulate such cosmic phenomena as galaxies without recourse to mysterious, unseen shaping influences. We can see evidence of these cosmic plasmas in our own ionosphere and in the brilliant auroras that can light up the night sky. We can see them also in our solar corona and the misnamed “solar wind.” And we can see them shaping whole galaxies, like our Milky Way.
Nevertheless, modern astrophysicists are in denial and posit a plethora of ever more fanciful hypothetical entities – WIMPS, MACHOS, MOND, SIDM, SADM, FDM and so on – to mask the inherent deficiencies of a gravitation-only universe. Of course, a lot is at stake for the astrophysics cult. Emperors do not like to be unclothed. But more important, they are on the wrong side of a scientific revolution the like of which we have not seen since Copernicus and Galileo. It seems clear that the Big Bang never happened, that there are no black holes, dark energy, dark matter, MACHOS, or any other invisible and unverifiable mysteries. Moreover, it seems that our sun is not a gravity-driven thermonuclear reactor but a plasma pinch-driven generator. Even Einstein has been knocked off his pedestal. No wonder the astrophysicists “do not go gentle into that good night” (to borrow a famous line from poet Dylan Thomas). But don’t take my word for all this. Read Donald Scott’s book (including the open letter now signed by more than 400 scientists), or go online and visit the website of the distinguished electrical engineer Anthony Peratt (http://plasmauniverse.info) or read his book, Physics of the Plasma Universe.
As I said, Mea Culpa.
Thought for the Day: Scott characterizes mainstream cosmology with the acronym: Fabricated Ad hoc Inventions Repeatedly Invoked in Efforts to Defend Untenable Scientific Theories (FAIRIE DUST). It is also a classic case of what can be called mathematical mysticism, an affliction that can be traced back to one of the founders of Western science, Pythagoras of Samos and his Pythagorean Brotherhood. It involves a conviction that the mathematical properties that can be found in the natural world are the underlying reality; if it’s logically tight it must be true. However, the map is not the territory, to quote a famous iconoclast, Alfred Korzybski.
An Introduction
In his path-breaking book, Beyond Reductionism (1969), the famed novelist and polymath Arthur Koestler remarked that "true innovation occurs when things are put together for the first time that had been separate." He was talking about synergy, of course, a phenomenon that is still greatly underrated and vastly more important even than Koestler imagined. I call it "nature's magic."
Synergy is in fact one of the great governing principles of the natural world; it ranks right up there with such heavyweight concepts as gravity, energy, information and entropy as one of the keys to understanding how the world works. It has been a wellspring of creativity in the evolution of the universe; it has greatly influenced the overall trajectory of life on Earth; it played a decisive role in the emergence of humankind; it is vital to the workings of every modern society; and it is no exaggeration to say that our ultimate fate depends on it. Indeed, every day, in a thousand different ways, our lives are shaped, and re-shaped, by synergy.
All of these grandiose-sounding claims are discussed in detail, with many hundreds of examples, in three of my books: The Synergism Hypothesis (McGraw-Hill, 1983), Nature's Magic (Cambridge University Press, 2003), and Holistic Darwinism (University of Chicago Press, 2005), as well as in many of my articles for professional journals. Some of these publications are available at my website: http://www.complexsystems.org/
The purpose of this blog is to provide a continuing update on synergy and an opportunity for some dialogue on this important and still underappreciated phenomenon, along with commentaries on various topics - political, economic, and social -- from a synergy-monger's perspective. The tag-lines for each entry, with a "thought for the day," are the unregulated firecrackers that go off in my mind from time to time.
Peter Corning pacorning@complexsystems.org
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Synergy is in fact one of the great governing principles of the natural world; it ranks right up there with such heavyweight concepts as gravity, energy, information and entropy as one of the keys to understanding how the world works. It has been a wellspring of creativity in the evolution of the universe; it has greatly influenced the overall trajectory of life on Earth; it played a decisive role in the emergence of humankind; it is vital to the workings of every modern society; and it is no exaggeration to say that our ultimate fate depends on it. Indeed, every day, in a thousand different ways, our lives are shaped, and re-shaped, by synergy.
All of these grandiose-sounding claims are discussed in detail, with many hundreds of examples, in three of my books: The Synergism Hypothesis (McGraw-Hill, 1983), Nature's Magic (Cambridge University Press, 2003), and Holistic Darwinism (University of Chicago Press, 2005), as well as in many of my articles for professional journals. Some of these publications are available at my website: http://www.complexsystems.org/
The purpose of this blog is to provide a continuing update on synergy and an opportunity for some dialogue on this important and still underappreciated phenomenon, along with commentaries on various topics - political, economic, and social -- from a synergy-monger's perspective. The tag-lines for each entry, with a "thought for the day," are the unregulated firecrackers that go off in my mind from time to time.
Peter Corning pacorning@complexsystems.org
__________________________________________________
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
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